When we were young we ran laughing through storms. Now we shamble hip to hip, stepping carefully over puddles, scowling into wind-blown rain, his bones sharp against me. In the car park I’m cheered by the sight of the stolid ute,

In July this year, Geordie Williamson, Chief Literary Critic of The Australian, wrote of the crisis facing the development of an Australian National Literature exacerbated by government funding cuts to the arts, ‘the defunding of literary magazines that incubate literary talent, [and] the likely dismantling of our local publishing industry through the scrapping of parallel importation laws’.